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MtGox.com is offline

mtgox.com

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Re: MtGox.com is offline

#471

Post by brianpgordon »

wpietri wrote: post #265
aegiso wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the rumors are true and Gox is tanking, I don't think Karpeles can ever adequately feel the aggregate pain that his incompetence in his role has caused MtGox customers. He deserves much worse than nasty internet comments. There are plenty of entrepreneurs on HN alone who given the resources Gox had could manage to not (unknowingly) lose half a billion dollars due to broken programming in the timespan that Gox did.…

I'm with you on the first part, but I have a hard time believing that this was solely broken programming and ignorance. I think we are well into the territory of negligence, and I could well believe that we will eventually discover the sort of dubious behavior and/or outright fraud that accompany accidental ponzi schemes.

You may change your mind after reading some of his blog posts:

http://blog.magicaltux.net/2008/11/30/eve-online-pathfinder/

http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-wh...

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#472

Post by jami »

icedchai wrote: post #421

If 700,000 BTC were really stolen over a long term, the people running mtgox must be complete idiots. How hard is it to occasionally add up the amount in the wallet and compare to the customer DB balances? You would think this would be done hourly (if not, at least daily) as part of sanity check / auditing process.

I bet they did occasionally check. And leaving it at, "Hm, that's weird. Oh well!" was where it went from problem to disaster.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#473

Post by crististm »

Lazare wrote: post #401
tlrobinson wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Transacting under the auspices of a neutral, trusted third party is what money means." Can you explain this a little more? How do I need to trust a 3rd party when I use, say, gold as money?

If you're using gold as money , then you are certainly trusting many third parties. Consider; what does using gold as money mean? Are we trading notional gold? Certificates that claim to represent gold in some vault? Obviously you need to trust the issuer of the certificates. Are you using minted gold coins? Obviously you need to trust the mint and more generally the entire financial system that equates those coins w…

Gold as in Au does not need any third party. Certificates... that is another thing.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#474

Post by gnaritas »

pbiggar wrote: post #152
jamesaguilar wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On some level, if you lose many life savings worth of wealth through what I can only assume was gross negligence and incompetence, you should expect the hatred. It's not like you can lose hundreds of millions of dollars -- or even tens, for the pedants who want us to take the integral of the value through the buy side of the order book -- through an honest mistake. He deserves the infamy he's getting.

The point is that these people are people - have some compassion. I failed in my last startup, fairly publicly, and got a fair amount of internet hatred, and suffice to say I was not a happy bunny. But I didnt fail with remotely the publicity this got - I can't even imagine what the mtgox people must be feeling.

People who commit fraud deserve no compassion. Failing and stealing are vastly different things. Gox didn't just fail, they tried to hide it and have done nothing to deserve a single lick of compassion.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#475

Post by crististm »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #455
haberman wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if I have any schadenfreude here it's not for him. It's for all of the people who smugly told us for years that Bitcoin is superior to our "legacy" fiat managed and regulated monetary system system in every way, and anyone who can't see that is an idiot.

It's a good thing that nobody has ever been massively fucked over by a regulated fiat system.

Currency devaluation (not inflation) amounts practically to the same thing: money lose their value overnight. You go to sleep a millionaire and the next day you pay a million for half a bread.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#476

Post by SilasX »

haberman wrote: post #96
blhack wrote: post #68

It's really easy in all of this to pile a bunch of hatred on Mark Karpeles, but please, everybody remember that he is a human being, with real human emotions, and that those things really do hurt. -- MtGox was (past tense is probably appropriate here, but for the sake of anybody who had coins there, I hope not) a startup that failed spectacularly , and publicly, and took a TON of peoples' money with it. The transacti…

Yes, if I have any schadenfreude here it's not for him. It's for all of the people who smugly told us for years that Bitcoin is superior to our "legacy" fiat managed and regulated monetary system system in every way, and anyone who can't see that is an idiot.

I got mugged. Obviously the US Dollar is a failure.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#477

Post by gnaritas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #466
jamesaguilar wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only given an unacceptably broad interpretation of the word "Ponzi." Fraud is the one you're looking for.

Ponzi schemes are a form of fraud, sure, but the particular kind of fraud under discussion shares the key features of a Ponzi scheme, since its sustainable exactly as long as there is a sufficient net inflow of money from the outside to cover the money being extracted by uncontrollable losses. The only difference from a traditional Ponzi scheme is that in such a scheme the extraction is to the fraudsters pockets, rat…

> but the particular kind of fraud under discussion shares the key features of a Ponzi scheme

No it doesn't; the key feature of a Ponzi scheme is intentional fraud using a phony investment that doesn't actually exit. That's what a Ponzi scheme is.

Bitcoin has nothing in common with a Ponzi scheme and all you people who keep repeating this non-sense need to go educate yourselves on what a Ponzi scheme actually is.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#478

Post by dragonwriter »

gnaritas wrote: post #477
dragonwriter wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ponzi schemes are a form of fraud, sure, but the particular kind of fraud under discussion shares the key features of a Ponzi scheme, since its sustainable exactly as long as there is a sufficient net inflow of money from the outside to cover the money being extracted by uncontrollable losses. The only difference from a traditional Ponzi scheme is that in such a scheme the extraction is to the fraudsters pockets, rat…

> but the particular kind of fraud under discussion shares the key features of a Ponzi scheme No it doesn't; the key feature of a Ponzi scheme is intentional fraud using a phony investment that doesn't actually exit. That's what a Ponzi scheme is. Bitcoin has nothing in common with a Ponzi scheme and all you people who keep repeating this non-sense need to go educate yourselves on what a Ponzi scheme actually is.

> No it doesn't; the key feature of a Ponzi scheme is intentional fraud on a phone investment that doesn't actually exit.

Assuming the description of this as being a loss that, however unintended when it first started occurring, was known, concealed, and papered over by using other funds, it was an intentional fraud from that point on a phony investment that doesn't actually exist.

> Bitcoin has nothing in common with a Ponzi scheme

That may be true about Bitcoin, but not about the scenario proposed upthread about what was going on at Mt. Gox. They aren't the same thing.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#479

Post by jafaku »

lmm wrote: post #402
jafaku wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop spamming your copycoin. Doge offers nothing new other than the picture of a dog. If you think more coins is better (whatever that means, for an infinitely divisible currency), you might as well just used Infinitecoin or whatever.

Nice, anyone who disagrees with you is a spammer? (And it's not "mine"; I'm not involved with or holding any cryptocoin) It's not about the number of coins, it's about how the number changes over time. I think bitcoin's regressive, pyramidal exponential decay is a very bad thing. I'm much more willing to support a currency that has e.g. a constant mining reward/year. Doge is the only one I'm aware of that departs fro…

> Doge is the only one I'm aware of that departs from the bitcoin model.

It's not. Maybe you should try to get informed a bit before sharing your opinions based on whatever meme you saw on reddit.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#480

Post by gnaritas »

AJ007 wrote: post #136
jmomo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not aware of any indication that this was a ponzi scheme. Saying that it was, without evidence, is misinformation. The loss of coins was unintentional on the behalf of MtGox. It may have been stupid that basic abc123 auditing would have probably revealed that there was a problem months/years ago, but evil has not been shown at this point in time.

If they continued to take in deposits after they knew they were insolvent, it was a ponzi scheme. Every ponzi operator dreams of earning themselves to solvency.

> If they continued to take in deposits after they knew they were insolvent, it was a ponzi scheme.

You clearly have no idea what a ponzi scheme actually is; educate yourself before making such foolish public statements.

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